BAD BAD OT3
by Aya-kun Rose
Summary: Ray Palmer wasn't invited to someone's bachelor party, and a bunch of non-sequitur shipping ensues. Spoilers for the current seasons of Legends of Flarrowverse. Mostly nonsense, partially fluff.


Sometimes you don't get invited to bachelor parties. Or birth of a first grandson parties. Or congrats you made it off the island alive again parties.

Let's face it, you don't get invited to parties as a general rule.

The closest experience you have is the cumulative black tie events you attended on behalf of Palmer Tech, although invitations to such affairs were more a matter of padding out the millionaire playboy industrialist demographic than a solicitation of your winning personality.

(Come to think of it, you never even went to your _own_ bachelor parties. Although you suppose this is largely due to those two engagements never making it to term.)

And anyway, you were a little preoccupied with saving younger you from the perils of 1988 suburbia while Stein was off seeing little Ronnie into the world, so that one was really just a matter of bad timing. You're sure that if adequate planning had been involved, it would have been you and not MICK RORY of all people to tag along.

And maybe Oliver wasn't really in a partying mood, what with Thea and William and all. You get that. Then again, Oliver Queen wouldn't know the partying mood if it came up and instantly got three arrows to carefully targeted vital organs for its trouble.

Which leaves Barry Allen's bachelor party, and the fact that Ray Palmer's noticeable absence from which has absolutely no discernible excuse.

You and Barry have something special, you always thought. Two connected souls. You both have do-gooder track records that go back to way before you became superheroes. You both have a head for hard science and a heart for science fiction. You both work hard to protect your loved ones from ever experiencing that kind of ultimate loss the two of you have survived over and over.

Not to mention you both have immaculate hair and look great in uniform.

And you know you're living outside the traditional understanding of linear time, where temporal eddies swirl cause and effect and can reasonably be blamed for losing your mail, but you end up hearing from Mick who heard from Jax who heard from Stein who heard from Caitlin back in 2017 that Barry's gone and finally got himself married.

Why it always has to be Mick instead of you, you'll probably never know.

You know you are a leading member of a team in charge of operating a bonafide time machine, so you could just make a pit stop to a couple of months ago and make a note of reminding whoever it was that sent out the invites. But you are also a highly decorated Boy Scout of America so you settle for avoiding time aberrations by inviting Barry's gang to your place for a shindig of your own creation.

It's some time - speaking from a linear, subjective viewpoint - before the business of superheroing quiets down enough for both teams to take a step back for some R&R. But in the end, not everybody who was invited shows up.

Since the bachelor party's already ancient history, you decided to make it an event for general congratulations and invited both Barry and Iris as well as the rest of S.T.A.R. Labs. Except Joe West declined, citing allergies to time travel. And Caitlin bowed out, as well, prior engagements and all that. Iris was on board except at the last minute Central City Picture News sent her on assignment to Star City to grab some juicy clickbait headlines thanks to her known connections to the superhero underground.

You tried to convince them that you could postpone. Time machine and all. But Iris West-Allen pushed Barry and Cisco out the door and made you boys promise to have a good time on her behalf.

Having never been to or hosted a party with friends, you wind up wondering whether anyone is having a good time at all.

Mick got through _Fiddler on the Roof_ just fine, but drank himself to sleep before the opening number of _Oklahoma!_ was through. Sara's propped up on the floor leaning against his legs and Zari's snoring in her lap.

Amaya politely stayed through the opening snack buffet, but excused herself when the lights went down. Nate watched her go, and made up some excuse himself not long after.

Stein and Jax and Cisco ended up chattering like school girls about the Waverider's tech, and after repeated shushings by the assembled musical-lovers, eventually took the hint and wandered off on a tour of the ship's underbelly.

So it's just you and Barry on the couch with a bowl of popcorn between you, attentively watching the antics of Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor.

"I used to watch this with my mom all the time," Barry confides to you quietly. Probably so as not to wake the others, but maybe also because he's a little shy to admit it. "Especially on rainy days and stuff."

"That's cool," you reply. "I, uh, watched it once with a baby Dominator named Gumball. His mom tried to kill us but um. She didn't! Ha ha."

"Um," Barry says, frowning, eyes flicking to you and back to the movie. "That's cool."

Remember how you weren't invited to many parties? Could this stellar conversation have something to do with it?

"Is it just me or does Donald O'Connor totally outclass Gene Kelly in this?" Barry asks you after a while. "Or maybe I just feel like I have more in common with Cosmo rather than Don and I subconsciously feel like he never gets the credit he deserves."

"I wouldn't have thought you of all people identified with the goofy sidekick," you say, "but I know exactly what you mean."

Barry shrugs, but now there's an avenue opened between you.

"You know, I always felt bad for Cosmo in the end," you try again during one of the lulls between numbers. "Don and Kathy run off to live happily ever after and he winds up with nothing."

Barry looks at you with a quiet side-eye. "He doesn't end up with nothing. He has a whole studio department to run. Besides..."

But Barry trails off. You look over and see him shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth.

"Besides?" You're patient. You can wait out a mouthful of popcorn.

Barry glances down and scratches at the back of his neck. When he puts his arm down, it's along the back of the couch and he tucks one of his legs up under him as he shifts a little to face you.

"Besides," he starts again, meeting your eyes briefly and then finally addressing the TV. "He doesn't need to get the girl to have a happy ending. I never thought Cosmo was, you know, into girls. Or anybody, really. He seemed happy enough with his work."

This is one of those few ways in which you and Barry are kind of the same but also a whole lot different.

You see what he's getting at, though. "I hear that," you concede. "Still, my personal read always was that Cosmo and Don were, uh, or could have been an item. But public morals of the era prevented them from acting on it, and to top it all off, Kathy comes waltzing into the picture and effectively cancels their subtext relationship. That never seemed fair."

There's a small but knowing smile on Barry's face that tells you that you're still on the same page.

"What, you mean Don and Cosmo couldn't be an item without the sex stuff?" he challenges. "I happen to know from experience that that's not necessary to define an active relationship."

A new challenger appears. "Like you want me to believe that you and Iris sat up playing pattycake and braiding each other's hair on your wedding night."

You look over to see Sara with her Mick armchair and Zari blanket giving Barry a predatory once-over.

That was slightly unfair and he blushes a little along his hairline. He does a thing where it looks like he's trying to rearrange his neck as he sits up straighter against the arm of the couch. "It's called falling in love with your best friend. The sex stuff is totally secondary."

"Sex stuff or no," she says, sliding out from Zari like a pro and settling the other woman against Mick in her place, "I think you boys are completely missing the point."

You glance at Barry. "Which is?"

Sara comes and helps herself to the cozy little spot between the two of you on the couch, relocating the popcorn to the floor. She points out the trio on the screen, sitting around Don's kitchen with sandwiches and milk.

"Look at them. Cosmo's got a thing for Don, obviously. Who wouldn't. And Don and Kathy have their quaint little heteronormative leading-man-leading-lady thing going on, sure. But our boy Don, well." She turns her head to you and then to Barry, looking up at you both like she was the one with twenty degrees and you were the high school dropouts.

"He's into both of them and Kathy's cool with it!" Sara shakes her hands at the screen. "If that isn't a picture of polyamorous domestic bliss, I don't know what is."

"Hm," you and Barry both say. The room goes quiet as you study the scene as it plays out before you. You gradually notice the way your head is tilting farther and farther to the right in curiosity that eventually pays out as enlightenment.

"I ship it," you say quietly.

Sara nods, pleased. She needles Barry in the ribs until he squirms. "Sex stuff or no, this way all three of us can project onto these characters to our hearts' content."

The three of you sit contemplatively on the couch, watching the silver screen stars who are now sitting and laughing like maniacs on a couch of their own.

You begin to grow increasingly aware of Sara's arm on the couch behind your neck. You glance over to Barry and see that his embarrassed flush has only deepened.

"You know, you two are a lot alike," she tells you. "In a skinny-jeans and big-and-tall kind of way." Her arm ghosts from the couch back, making your hair stand on end, and her hands end up settled on one each of your and Barry's knees. And stay there.

You actually hear Barry gulp.

"How about more popcorn?" you squeak. Forgetting exactly where the popcorn ended up, you manage to put your foot in it and then kick the bowl halfway across the room, sending popcorn flying.

Zari's jostled awake by Mick's sudden flinch, and she topples to the side amid a sea of popcorn. "Good morning?" she says groggily.

"Good morning," answers Mick (and WHY is it always Mick roRY), "Out of the way new girl, I need to take a leak."

And that's when you decide that parties were never really meant to be your forte after all.


End file.
